The Problems of 'Bittern'.

[Locoman69]

I’ve been interested in reading about the sad tale of ‘Bittern’ while working a main line ‘special’ and causing delays, due, it is claimed, to poor coal. As an ex footplateman I can assure readers that this is, obviously now and was when steam was in it’s heyday, quite a serious problem.

Back in steam days, all coal that was burnt was undoubtedly British and yet it too varied in quality depending on where it was mined. The best steam coal, on the Eastern Region, was Yorkshire Main, a very hard, black shiny coal with strong seams that broke easily to a decent size for firing. However this was only used for passenger work and selected long distance freight diagrams. The bulk of other freight trains and all other types of workings had to use a poorer quality coal, made up various grades, large amounts of coal dust and man made briquettes. These were made, I understand and stand corrected, from Welsh coal dust and a chemical to bind it together, either as a brick size or into ‘ovoids’, a large egg shape.

When I worked at Immingham, in the early 50’s, the depot had a modern coaling plant, commonly known by railwaymen as a ‘cenotaph’ due it’s very tall shape, but this was only filled with freight coal. The main line express engines, i.e. Kings Cross, Manchester and Birmingham services and all the eight daily express fish trains, which operated out of Grimsby Fish Dock, were filled at a nearby coaling stage, by hand. A job performed by young ‘passed engine cleaners’ when not on firing duties and paid a full labourers weekly wage. The coal was emptied out of a wagon into around twenty - one ton wheeled buckets and when required, tipped into the engine tender when each engine called at the stage. All the coal had to be broken into up the correct size for firing and it was stacked, by hand as high as possible on the tender. At New England were I transferred to later, the coaling plant there had two hoppers, one for express coal and the other for freight.

Due to the high quality coal and express engines being in good condition it was rare to experience steaming problems. It should also be remembered that due to the weight of the trains and free wheeling ability according to the constant changing gradients, steam locomotives were rarely working under constant maximum pressure. It was only on very long uphill drags that hard physical effort and work was required, plus the fact that and any loss in steam pressure and boiler water level would soon be made up on the downhill run. However on freight workings it was far different.

In all my firing days I only ever experienced having a ‘blow up’ once. In loco men’s parlance this means a massive drop in steam pressure and the boiler water level in the ‘bottom nut’ i.e. just bobbing about from going out of sight in the gauge glasses and as a consequence the driver having to stop the train practically anywhere in mid section and waiting to try and build up pressure again, before limping off to the nearest signal box, to explain. My ‘blow up’ occurred while working a ‘coal empties’ from New England to Doncaster on the down ‘slow’ of the ECML on the long uphill drag from Essendine to Stoke Summit, five miles south of Grantham. The engine was a 2-8-0 Austerity and the coal was a mixture of wet coal dust, with the result after around 20 miles of leaving Westwood Sidings at Peterborough there was just a large pile of dark unburnt coal in the middle of the firebox and despite a constant prodding with a long fire iron to disturb it into life, it was a lost cause. I can quite understand the similar conditions on ‘Bittern’, as reported.

Although it is the fireman’s responsibility to maintain steam pressure and water level in the boiler, the driver also is also constantly aware of how the engine is performing and he requires steam pressure at just below maximum. Then according to the effort required he would be constantly adjusting the regulator, which controls the steam to the cylinders, similar to a cars throttle, and using whatever ‘cut off’ with the reverser. Similar to using a cars gears box.

When on the run and it can be seen that the engine fails to be increasing steam pressure, this is a bad sign, because it is still using water to make the steam and in consequence the boiler water level in the gauge glass can be seen to be slowly dropping. The fireman now has a dilemma. The water level cannot be allowed to drop too far or that would cause disastrous problems, but if he decides to inject more water into the boiler, this also drops the steam pressure further.

Contrary to what many probably believe, water is not pumped into the boiler, it is injected by two devices called injectors which are mounted on the footplate boiler front and manually operated by the fireman. On the more modern locomotives one is live steam operated and the other by exhaust steam, this is steam which has performed it’s work in the cylinders and before going to exhaust, is used to operate the right hand injector, thereby saving steam. To operate either, cold water from the tender water tank is mixed with steam and forced through several cone like devices which increase it’s pressure high enough to overcome the boiler pressure and be injected into the boiler. (If you can imagine using a garden water hose and squeezing the open end, this increases the pressure slightly, similar to the injector).

Normally when the injector was turned on, even though the injected water was now at boiling point, steam pressure would gradually drop. However, it was regular on main line express work when an engine was working very hard over certain distances the boiler could be using so much water that the exhaust injector was left turned on and steam pressure maintained at the same time. Obviously to achieve this, the engine had to be in first class fettle, in the hands of an experienced crew, and obviously, with good quality coal.

So it can be well imagined that in the case of Bittern on this recent ‘special’ the problems any crew would have with poor coal.

[notrom]

A fascinating post, Locoman69, a reminder that firing and driving a steam locomotive was and is skilled work. No wonder BR was so anxious to get rid of steam.

A minor point: you say that the 'cenotaph' coaling units were for freight only and your logic certainly makes sense. However, there is an LNER poster showing one of these with an A3, the message being how modern and efficient the LNER was: "The electrical plant on the LNER automatically coals the Flying Scotsman in six minutes"

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Refuellin ... 57234_.htm

Presumably the coaling plant in the original poster is much the same as what you refer to. So my question is: was the original poster pure PR bullsh*t or did the plant's usage change from the 1930s to your experience in the 1950s? Presumably poorer quality coal supplies in the 50s would have meant a change in usage made sense.

[Locoman69]

Hi Notrom,
re 'cenotaph' coaling plants. Personally I can only refer to the coaling plants at Immingham and New England. Regarding anywhere else, no doubt this would apply to the main type of work carried out at that depot, especially if they had a great deal of main line express work. On the Eastern Region I refer to such places as Kings Cross, Grantham, Doncaster, York, Newcastle, Leeds etc. Hopefully someone from anyone of these depots could oblige.

Re the Flying Scotsman poster, you don't specify a date it was published. I have tried to view the poster but it claims it is not available. If it was pre-war, conditions then would have been much different and no doubt the quality of coal far superior. Remember, railways pre-war were in their hey day and the main transport movers for passengers and freight.

Thanks for your comments
Locoman 69

[CVR1865]

It was an LNER poster, I have a book on them. Was coal quality a sudden or gradual decline?

[Mr Bunt]

Was coal quality a sudden or gradual decline?

If the experiences of the RH&DR in the 1990s are anything to go by it was really neither. The problem was that as one colliery shut down and we shopped around for the closest equivalent coal then the one that came from would close as well. We went from Lady Windsor, to Oakdale and then Deep Navigation before looking at stuff from Russia, Poland and all sorts of other unlikely places.

A big problem with coal, even "good" hard steam coal from the old UK pits, is mixing stuff from different sources. This can cause clinker problems because one coal may burn at a temperature which exceeds the fusion point of the ash produced by the other; so on their own neither is a problem but when they're mixed you're in for trouble and a box full of clinker. If, as is quite possible, Bittern was running on a mixture of different coals obtained from all sorts of different places that's probably what messed everything up.

[notrom]

Here's another link to the poster, which was issued in 1932.


http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HkM6 ... es&f=false

[billdonald]

It's quite true that locomotive coal was of such variable quality that stopping for a blow up was par for the course. My collection of the occurrence books for South Gosforth East covering the period 1931-56 shows numerous instances of train too long in section signals between this cabin and Jesmond/Manors North. The down B&T line included the Jesmong Incline which rapidly winded engines by the time the reached the next uphill section at South Gosforth East. In the 1930s, the Sentinel railcars operating the Blyth/Newbiggin service from Manors North made regular appearances in the occurrence book. Of course the Sentinels were notoriously difficult to fire at the best of times and it was very easy to knock them off the boil - I know this from personal experience of operating Sentinel steam wagons. But to return to the original point, coal for steam raising purposes is very much pot luck, and should not be regarded as a failure in the sensationalist sense.

Bill

[third-rail]

i would have thought the locos would well winded before they reached jesmond station as they had steep climb to there from manors the tracks at the north end of jesmond station dipped to pass under the road bridge on the long climb to west jesmond station,i know the dip was very noticable when on a coast express.cant remember where west jesmond box was as there was a coal yard there.
the next box was south gosforth located at the end of the sta platform cannot remember if it controlled access to the large goods yard that was there but it did the two sidings that were there and the coal yard plus the south end of the triangle.
so it is no wonder that the sunday ecml diversions where always double headed

[Boris]

Obviously non of these writers ever had the problem of firing an O2 up to Woodhead with a tender full of slack and briquettes